Why do we consider God's sending his son to be such a great act of love?

[AngryAtheist8]

This is true. However, Aquinas relied on a faulty understanding of science to inform his philosophical conclusions. No one uses Aquinas’ understanding of human generation to explain anything!

Does that mean that the Church is wrong, here? Well, you’d have to make the claim that theologians speak for the Church by virtue of their work (or by virtue of their own membership in the Church, or in a religious order, or university). Of course, that isn’t the case at all – in fact, it’s backward! Theologians do their thing, and the Church decides whether to incorporate their thought in Church teaching. If it worked the way you are asserting it does, then you could say “the U.S. should attack country X”, and by virtue of the fact that you’re American, you’re claiming that this becomes the policy of the U.S. …! (Substitute “Colin Powell” or “Rick Santorum” or “Al Gore” for you in the example, and you have the same argument: no matter who you are, unless you speak from a position of authority and responsibility, you don’t speak for the organization. Now, the organization can clearly listen to you and later decide, “you know, they’re right. we should attack country X”, but that’s a completely different scenario. as far as I can tell, you’re not asserting that this line of thought by Aquinas is official Church doctrine. Are you…?)

No one – whether saint or Doctor of the Church – automatically speaks for the Church, and no one has the charism of infallibility except the Magisterium.

**So, saying that “Aquinas got it wrong”, or “Augustine’s interpretation of Christian anthropology has defects” doesn’t say “the Church’s take on women’s ordination is wrong”./**QUOTE]

Your forgetting something important.
Saint Aquinas was named a Doctor of the Church, because of his large contribution to Catholic doctrine. So were a number of other rather misogynistic saints (such as Saint Augustine).

The Catholic Encyclopedia itself backs me up on this (link to source: newadvent.org/cathen/05075a.html).

 

[AngryAtheist8]

Excellent points, my friend! Please consider the following concepts:
How can God sacrifice anything?

1. Jesus can initially do anything because He has free will. He has all-power. Since He chose to bring men to freely love as He loves and promises to us that He will not change from this goal, He has essentially sacrificed all-power.
2. The sacrifice is also revealed in the paradox of: Since God caused creation, and will never choose to destroy His creation, does this mean He cannot destroy it, therefore does not have all-power? Both yes and no are valid. He can destroy it, but He won’t. He cannot destroy it, because He is sacrificing all-power for the sake of Love.

Regarding Incarnation
Incarnation can be defined by dictionary.com as the assumption of human nature. Though God is True Human, God is not true human nature. He is assumed human nature. The difference between Godly nature and human nature can be found in the greatest commandments, because if God is asking us to perfect living according to these commandments, He must be perfect at them. The Godly Nature or the Greatest Commandments can be defined as: Always be and spread the means to freely be perfectly patient, kind, and motivated with all the body, spirit, thoughts, and will equally towards others and the self for the unbreakable peace and happiness of all your relationships and self. Therefore, acting outside of this in any form is human nature.
Essentially, Jesus had to pretend to be angered in the temple (ie. assumed human nature) in order to fulfill the requirement of allowing us to freely choose to follow Him.

Thoughts?

As I understand it, the greatest/most important commandment is to love God.
But in Jesus Christ’s case that would merely be self-love (since he IS God).

 

[CatholicRoots]

I’ve never understood why this was always considered such a sacrifice. God sent his son to die for our sins, but neither God nor Jesus actually lost anything. Basically, the way I see it is Jesus was in heaven, went to earth for a few decades to do an unpleasant, but quick (relative to eternity 30-some years is really quick) job, and then he went back up to heaven. Job done. Easy peasy. Why do people always talk about this like it was such a sacrifice?

I don’t think that anybody, catholics included, can comprehend the full extent of what his sacrifice was. It is a mystery but we in a simple way can start grasping at it. It was a multi-faceted sacrifice and there are many aspects to his passion and death. His bodily suffering on the cross would have been extremely painful, he was also sacrificing himself with the knowledge that many in the future would respond with contempt towards him; irionically the people that contend that they don’t believe in him still find capacity to ridicule a person they do not believe in.

I have taken in to account only the bodily sufferings thus far, but there were many other, maybe even greater? sufferings. Imagine the purest thing i.e. God who by neccissity is all-good, taking on the putrid sins of the world before his Father, and these included ALL sins, extending to the utmost squalor of wickedness. Imagine how Jesus felt in the garden knowning that he would have to take on all sins before the Father, that is why the chalice was so bitter. Purity lost in a human is a sorrowful sight, but the most pure lamb taking on sins is of such a greater magnitude the chasm is too great. He gave us unending love we have returned that with ingratitude. His sacrifice hasn’t ended, we as humans are still causing him pain with are ingratitude.

 

[jochoa]

To my friend, Adolphus WC,
Excellent points once again. Please consider a couple of concepts:

I think in sacrificing we are shown the joy of losing our self (ego) to the greater. A preview if you will.

You are associating doing God’s Will with sacrifice. Since doing God’s will is sacrificial, God must be making sacrifices.

It is the intent of the Eucharist, how successful it is depends on the individual. They have to open to the experience.

Maybe they are missing the forest for the trees. Perfect union with God doesn’t leave room for the ego. “Thy will be done”

These points only strengthen the argument that we can become God while on earth. Please consider the following:
Since we can achieve oneness with God during Eucharist, then we can experience Heaven on earth. Since we can experience Heaven on earth, as well as do God’s Will while on earth, then we can become God while on earth. And since Catholicism knows “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” then we can become God while on earth.

Thoughts?

 

[jochoa]

As I understand it, the greatest/most important commandment is to love God.
But in Jesus Christ’s case that would merely be self-love (since he IS God).

Excellent points, my friend! Please consider the following analysis:
God says the greatest thing to do is: Love. (Where Love is patient and love is kind.)
God says the greatest commandment is to: Love God.
God says the greatest commandments are to: Love God with Everything AND Love your neighbor as yourself.
God also says to: Love your enemies.

Therefore, one obvious question that arises is:
If we are to Love God with everything and all the time, does that mean our neighbor, self, and enemies are God?

First, How to Love God with Everything, all the time, while loving others, including your enemies as yourself?
If one interprets the Greatest Commandment as Be patient and kind for God.
And one interprets the second as Be patient and kind towards others, and the self.
And one interprets the third as, Be patient and kind in the face of impatience and meanness.

Then one can recognize that in the Greatest Commandment, being patient and kind FOR God is referring to motivation. And from our perspective, God is the Greatest Source of Motivation. He is inexhaustible, eternal, omnipresent, immaterial, and personal. Therefore, the following substitution can be made in the Greatest Commandment: Love God - Be perfectly patient, kind, and motivated. And God is definitely perfectly patient, kind, and motivated.
And it is now understandable how we can: Always and with Everything be motivated for God while being patient and kind towards others and the self, even in the face of impatience and meanness.

Thoughts?

 

[Adolphus_WC]

To my friend, Adolphus WC,
Excellent points once again. Please consider a couple of concepts:
You are associating doing God’s Will with sacrifice. Since doing God’s will is sacrificial, God must be making sacrifices.

These points only strengthen the argument that we can become God while on earth. Please consider the following:
Since we can achieve oneness with God during Eucharist, then we can experience Heaven on earth. Since we can experience Heaven on earth, as well as do God’s Will while on earth, then we can become God while on earth. And since Catholicism knows “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” then we can become God while on earth.

Thoughts?

No, it is still our ego sacrificing not God. God doesn’t conflict with himsel so there is nothing to sacrifice.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

No, it is still our ego sacrificing not God. God doesn’t conflict with himsel so there is nothing to sacrifice.

Good point:thumbsup:

 

[fred_conty]

As I understand it, the greatest/most important commandment is to love God.
But in Jesus Christ’s case that would merely be self-love (since he IS God).

It would be accurate to say that God is love. For God is knowledge, for God is mercy, for God is justice, for God is …

The reason: God is one eternal act. He is indivisable, He is one. And therefore that one is pure act, which is everything he is. So strictly speaking he does not have love for himself, but is love itself.

When we say God loves, and then we say God thinks, and then we say God speaks, we are saying those things about him to make him more like ourselves so we can understand, but in reality,
He is all of those in one act eternally. Otherwise he would change from one act to another and be different, and not unchangable which defines God.

But because He is Love, He loves us completely without reservation with his whole existence.
Which then means the complete love, His only beloved Son, is sent out of love to make us one with him again where we are, in time. And the Son, who is the Father’s love, consents because he is love. It is a divine love chain, because that is what the 3 divine holy persons in the one God are. It is because God is so good and so infinitly love that He wants to share with us the Joy and Happiness which only He can experience and thus gives us the means to join Him in this eternally. So we then become sons/daughters of God and inheiters of God’s bliss. As Paul says, “ABBA, Father.”

A few thoughts about a wonderful God we have.

 

[TheTrueCentrist]

Not at all interesting. You have it exactly backwords. Man’s evil necessitated his need for salvation. That is, no evil, no salvation required.

Sure, we can allow for the time being that it was mankind’s fault that it needed salvation.

But let us consider the particulars of that salvation. God’s plan was: “Send my son to become man and be betrayed and killed in order that he might be a sacrifice to redeem mankind.”
This plan *requires *both betrayal and murder. If Jesus was not betrayed (and consequently murdered), he would not have been a sacrifice, and therefore failed to redeem humanity.
Let us consider what is said about the betrayer by Jesus himself:

But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born."

Now what does this mean? It means that God took deliberate action (having Jesus conceived) with the foreknowledge that doing so would condemn Judas to commit this terrible sin. If God had not sent Jesus at that time, then Judas could not have committed such a sin. Indeed, God even chose to have Judas born even though Jesus Himself acknowledges “It would be better for him if he had not been born.”

Catholic theology holds that you cannot achieve a good end through an evil action, and condemning Judas to betray Jesus cannot be justified even by salvation of the whole world.

 

[Gorgias]

Sure, we can allow for the time being that it was mankind’s fault that it needed salvation.

But let us consider the particulars of that salvation. God’s plan was: “Send my son to become man and be betrayed and killed in order that he might be a sacrifice to redeem mankind.”

You have a rather ancient view of the notion of ‘satisfaction’. Even Aquinas saw satisfaction not as “God needs a sacrifice to repay man’s blood-guilt”; rather, he asserted that satisfaction, from God’s perspective, was in the finding of something that pleased him more than sin offended him. In this case, what pleased him was Jesus’ loving obedience to him – a love so strong that it led him to take on human form, and, out of love for his Father and for all humanity, led him to give up his life so that we might live.

betrayal? murder?

No: Love.

 

[Adolphus_WC]

You have a rather ancient view of the notion of ‘satisfaction’. Even Aquinas saw satisfaction not as “God needs a sacrifice to repay man’s blood-guilt”; rather, he asserted that satisfaction, from God’s perspective, was in the finding of something that pleased him more than sin offended him. In this case, what pleased him was Jesus’ loving obedience to him – a love so strong that it led him to take on human form, and, out of love for his Father and for all humanity, led him to give up his life so that we might live.

betrayal? murder?

No: Love.

There still remains the fact that if God is Omnipotent he could incarnate infinitely and because He can’t be diminished the cost is nil. How can it be a sacrifice if it costs nothing?

I do see the value in the example of sacrifice offered by Jesus but an actual sacrifice doesn’t seem possible given the nature of God.

 

[jochoa]

No, it is still our ego sacrificing not God. God doesn’t conflict with himsel so there is nothing to sacrifice.

What I find very interesting about your understanding is it seems to be in alignment with the following:
If one is sacrificing to grow closer in oneness with God, then we are sacrificing the unholy spirit/devil within us. When one acts in oneness with God, there is no sacrifice because God is perfect.

Does that seem reasonable?

 

[TheTrueCentrist]

You have a rather ancient view of the notion of ‘satisfaction’. Even Aquinas saw satisfaction not as “God needs a sacrifice to repay man’s blood-guilt”; rather, he asserted that satisfaction, from God’s perspective, was in the finding of something that pleased him more than sin offended him. In this case, what pleased him was Jesus’ loving obedience to him – a love so strong that it led him to take on human form, and, out of love for his Father and for all humanity, led him to give up his life so that we might live.

betrayal? murder?

No: Love.

But if Jesus was God, then God was pleased by God doing exactly as God wanted. That is silly, God always does what God wants (he is always obedient to himself) regardless of whether or not he is incarnate.

 

[Adolphus_WC]

What I find very interesting about your understanding is it seems to be in alignment with the following:
If one is sacrificing to grow closer in oneness with God, then we are sacrificing the unholy spirit/devil within us. When one acts in oneness with God, there is no sacrifice because God is perfect.

Does that seem reasonable?

Yes, if there is something left to sacrifice, it is not of God. God is not lacking.

 

[jochoa]

Yes, if there is something left to sacrifice, it is not of God. God is not lacking.

Excellent! Please consider two concepts:
From our perspective:
Since building the Church is an act of God, when we build ourselves to be closer in union with God, this is also an act of God. Since building ourselves means destroying our unholiness or sacrificing unholiness, would you consider the sacrifice to be made by God, the holiness, within us or by the devil, the unholiness, within us?

From God’s perspective:
Although He is perfectly happy, He wants to experience and share the experience of a limitless happiness without anyone ever losing peace. This is the purpose of Heaven and of Life. In order to achieve a limitless happiness, there must be at least two living beings of equality. Since it is impossible for God, the Creator, to stop knowing everything or being all-powerful, He has to devise a plan in which we can become equal in being as He is. Therefore, God, the Creator, becomes the begotten Son. In doing so, He sacrifices all-knowledge and all-power. In the being of the Son, we are able to become equal in being with Him, therefore permitting Him and us to experience a limitless happiness and unbreakable peace for all eternity in Heaven.

Thoughts?

 

[Adolphus_WC]

Excellent! Please consider two concepts:
From our perspective:
Since building the Church is an act of God, when we build ourselves to be closer in union with God, this is also an act of God. Since building ourselves means destroying our unholiness or sacrificing unholiness, would you consider the sacrifice to be made by God, the holiness, within us or by the devil, the unholiness, within us?

From God’s perspective:
Although He is perfectly happy, He wants to experience and share the experience of a limitless happiness without anyone ever losing peace. This is the purpose of Heaven and of Life. In order to achieve a limitless happiness, there must be at least two living beings of equality. Since it is impossible for God, the Creator, to stop knowing everything or being all-powerful, He has to devise a plan in which we can become equal in being as He is. Therefore, God, the Creator, becomes the begotten Son. In doing so, He sacrifices all-knowledge and all-power. In the being of the Son, we are able to become equal in being with Him, therefore permitting Him and us to experience a limitless happiness and unbreakable peace for all eternity in Heaven.

Thoughts?

We are back where we started

God doesn’t sacrifice his power by not using it. Nothing is actually given up. He is not lacking.

If there is something left to be sacrificed then we aren’t in perfect union.

We’re going around in circles.

 

[Gorgias]

But if Jesus was God, then God was pleased by God doing exactly as God wanted. That is silly, God always does what God wants (he is always obedient to himself) regardless of whether or not he is incarnate.

Except that in this case, you’ve got a human incarnation. In the incarnation, Jesus was human – fully human. And, as a human, he gave up his life.

Also, by saying “God was pleased by God doing what God wanted God to do”, you’re playing fast and loose with the notion of the Trinity, as if there weren’t three persons in the Trinity (and one of these with a human incarnation, to boot). Don’t forget – if we just shrug and say “it wasn’t anything for Jesus, since he was God”, we’re falling short on the “fully human” part of the “fully human and fully divine” formulation. ‘Silliness’ only happens when you give short-shrift to the notion of Jesus’ humanity…

 

[jochoa]

We are back where we started

God doesn’t sacrifice his power by not using it. Nothing is actually given up. He is not lacking.

If there is something left to be sacrificed then we aren’t in perfect union.

We’re going around in circles.

Fair enough regarding all-power, but what about sacrificing all-knowledge?

 

[jochoa]

No, it is still our ego sacrificing not God. God doesn’t conflict with himsel so there is nothing to sacrifice.

My friend, thank you very much for taking the time to converse with me. I have learned much from you, and would like to share one last concept:
A sacrifice can be defined as a killing for spiritual growth.

Selfishness/ego cannot kill itself, therefore an outside source must do the killing. It is the Holy Spirit that does the killing of selfishness for spiritual growth. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is sacrificing selfishness, and selfishness is sacrificed by the Holy Spirit. And once the Holy Spirit has sacrificed all selfishness within ourselves, we will be wholly one with the Holy Spirit and will no longer need to have anything else sacrificed.

Although I am sorry we have had to go in a complete circle to get here, I am incredibly appreciative that you have conversed with me long enough for me find this understanding.

May the peace and joy of living be with you, and I look forward to more conversation.

Thoughts?

 

[Adolphus_WC]

My friend, thank you very much for taking the time to converse with me. I have learned much from you, and would like to share one last concept:
A sacrifice can be defined as a killing for spiritual growth.

Selfishness/ego cannot kill itself, therefore an outside source must do the killing. It is the Holy Spirit that does the killing of selfishness for spiritual growth. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is sacrificing selfishness, and selfishness is sacrificed by the Holy Spirit. And once the Holy Spirit has sacrificed all selfishness within ourselves, we will be wholly one with the Holy Spirit and will no longer need to have anything else sacrificed.

Although I am sorry we have had to go in a complete circle to get here, I am incredibly appreciative that you have conversed with me long enough for me find this understanding.

May the peace and joy of living be with you, and I look forward to more conversation.

Thoughts?

I think you and I are mixing the idea of sacrifice.

One can sacrifice in the act of killing," the priest sacrificed the lamb." and one can give a sacrifice “the farmer gave the lamb to be sacrificed” - If the two are done by separate people (the priest on one hand and the farmer on the other), there is a cost to the farmer, He no longer has a lamb it is lost to him forever. He has given up something that can’t be regained. There is no cost for the priest. It wasn’t his lamb.

So when I say God can’t be diminished therefore how can he sacrifice I am speaking from the farmer’s perspective. God can’t give up anything to be lost forever, because He can’t be diminished.

God gives and takes lives daily, so He can act as the priest.